


The Harsh Realities of Pleasant Dreams (In the Year That Never Was)

by steampunkmagic



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e01 This Is War, F/M, Purgatory, The Year That Never Was
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 12:23:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2348303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steampunkmagic/pseuds/steampunkmagic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ichabod and Abbie's life in the year that never really happened.  (Episode: This Is War 02x01)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Harsh Realities of Pleasant Dreams (In the Year That Never Was)

**Author's Note:**

> After watching that roller coaster of an episode I simply had to write something.

**_The Harsh Realities of Pleasant Dreams_ **

**_(In the Year That Never Was)_ **

 

****

                In the beginning it all happens so fast it is practically a blur.  Jenny slain by the Horseman War, Katrina taken by the Horseman Death, and Abbie trapped where he cannot reach her.   But Ichabod does not give up and neither does she.  A crack is all it takes.  A crack in the window Katrina used to reach him and through it Abbie is free. 

 

                He holds her while she cries for her sister.

 

                They barely have a moment's breath, a moment to celebrate, a second for Ichabod to truly believe that she is safe and with him again, before Death takes Katrina's life.   His beautiful, mysterious wife is found in an immaculate white wedding gown with her head severed clean from her neck.  Not a drop of blood stains the white fabric.   It was such an odd detail that, but it burned itself into his brain forever.    She resisted Abraham until the end so he removed her from the playing field.  Death's involvement is about revenge now, for both sides.

 

                This time Abbie holds him while he cries.

 

                A new found hatred fills him and he can see a hardness in Abbie's features he never glimpsed before.  It is another level of their connection.  Yet sometimes when Ichabod watches her profile in the too bright electric lights he wishes he could take the haunting sadness from her sweet face.   She is too good, both too soft and too strong to be faced with such hardships.  Their lives are not fair they are simply fate. 

 

                Ichabod thinks about fate a lot as the peaceful hamlet around them dissolves into a war zone. 

 

 

                A biblical exodus begins in Sleepy Hollow.  Cars line the highways in an attempt to escape the darkness which has risen once more.   Some even go on foot carrying what they can manage in armfuls and over leaden backpacks.  As witches and ghouls walk the streets and buildings burn no one can deny the existence of the supernatural any longer.   So the people flee rather than try and fight it.   Ichabod and Abbie do not blame them one bit. 

 

                "I wonder what would happen if we just grabbed a car and got the hell out of here."  Abbie remarks standing sentinel at the window.  She turns to gaze at him over her shoulder.

 

                He glances up from the book of horribly transcribed Medieval Latin he is attempting to translate.  The painfully incorrect grammar and so far useless information is creating a dull ache in his temple.  He focuses on Abbie across the room.  She is almost silhouetted by the fading sun behind her, but Ichabod can still make out the genuine concern in her eyes.  Abbie is only half joking and they both know it. 

 

                "Are you proposing we run away together Miss Mills?" He says lightly, smiling for what feels like the first time in ages.  "How terribly forward."

 

                She smiles too and it is like the sun has returned.  Ichabod is not sure when, over the last several months, he has become dependent on her smile.    He thought he would die when he lost his wife, after setting all his hopes on freeing her from purgatory.   Katrina left a gaping wound in him, but Abbie was always there - _is_ always there - to pick him back up again and pull him back together.

 

                Abbie sighs with a tired little laugh.  "Yeah, I guess we gotta stick around and be the _big damn heroes_ and all.  Sometimes I just wish we could get the day off."

 

                He suspects from her tone she is making a reference to some essence of pop culture he has yet to catch up on.   Not that he has much time to make up for two hundred plus years worth of missing historical knowledge.   The rather profound computer tomb Wikipedia has been useful in that regard; on the rare occasion he can get his phone working long enough to use it.

 

                "A day off would be nice."  He wants to say something more, but he does not know what. 

 

                 There are a lot of things Ichabod wants to say to Abbie, as she stands in the dying light, but he does not. 

 

 

                Things continue to spiral out of control.   Sleepy Hollow is no longer ruled by law and order.   It is only them and Captain Irving and his men fighting a seemingly unending war against wave after wave of the children of Hell.   Abbie's hard edges become more defined and he begins to forget what the sun was like.  They are soldiers forged in the iron of battle, solid and immovable in the face of darkness.  And they are a unit, inseparable, throughout it all. 

 

                They sleep at each other's side, afraid the other will be taken before the dawn.

 

 

                Abbie brings him a tiny cake in the colors of the American flag with a matching candle on top.  Ichabod had forgotten it was his birthday today, until she gifts him with a smile.  

 

                "Well what? Do we just stare at it?"  He asks when she continues to hold the cake out in front of him expectantly.

 

                "You make a wish.  You blow it out."  Abbie says as if this were obvious. "Another modern tradition."

 

                "Oh, a wish.  And here I thought science had won out over superstition in modern America."  He says to rile her and is rewarded by Abbie's patented eyebrow raise. 

 

                She keeps waiting giving him a pointed stare.  He fights to keep the smile in his eyes from spreading to his mouth and giving him away entirely.  Ichabod wants to thank fate for bringing them together.   He simply cannot imagine the world without her in it.   Had he known something was missing from his life before or was this a new awakening? 

 

                "Very well, a wish."

 

                "Not out loud." Abbie warns when he beings to speak.

 

                Ichabod rolls his eyes.  "Is there any end to this birthday madness?"

 

                She is having none of it.  Abbie is one of the few people who refuses to put up with his bluster.  "Just make it something good."

 

                Ichabod looks at her.  He takes in the beautiful woman before him, her softness, her hardness, and the way he can still see the young girl shining through the haunted darkness of her eyes.   She is complex and wonderful, and so much stronger than him, and so dependent on him.  Just as he is dependent on her.   He takes in Abbie.  He takes in everything he hopes, and fears, and feels.

 

                And then Ichabod makes his wish.

               


End file.
